I am the hiring manager for a large retail store. On this particular Monday, I have been reaching out to applicants about different openings and setting up phone interviews. One applicant states that she is interested in one of our openings, so I send her the link to schedule her phone interview online. These links expire twenty-four hours after being sent — which she was told about — as we typically have a lot of people scheduling interviews and it is first come, first served. When visiting the link, it gives you all available times for the next three days.

This applicant schedules her interview for the following day, Tuesday, late in the afternoon. That Tuesday morning, I get a text message from her at 9:00 am stating she is too busy for her fifteen-minute phone interview scheduled at 5:00 pm and wants to reschedule. I immediately respond.

Me: “That’s not a problem. Just click on the same link I originally sent you, and you can change your time from there.”

At 3:00 pm, I see that she still hadn’t rescheduled it, so I reach out to see if there were any problems getting it rescheduled. I ask if she needs assistance to get that processed or if she just wants to stick with the original interview time. Her interview time comes and goes with no response.

I am actually off the following day, Wednesday, but when I come into work on Thursday, I still have no response from her, so I can only assume she is no longer interested. I remove her from consideration to give other applicants the opportunity to interview for that position.

At 8:00 pm on Friday, she sends me a rude message stating that the interview link has expired. Since I am an hourly associate and I was off at 5:00 pm on Friday, I don’t see this message until I come in on Saturday at 7:00 am. I reply.

Me: “Yes, the link expired because it was only good for twenty-four hours. You haven’t responded to any of my previous messages to get a new interview scheduled.”

Her response comes within about fifteen minutes, and it blows my mind.

Applicant: “Well, excuse me for having a life. Maybe you should get one, too.”

This comes from someone who applied for one of our openings and responded enthusiastically when we reached out to her initially because she was “definitely interested” and even thanked me to the opportunity to interview. 

I have actively had to stop myself from messaging her back with the same type of attitude because, unlike her, I want to continue working and actually love my job. So, instead, I just reached out to the other stores (within the same company) in the area letting them know that that particular applicant probably wouldn’t be a good fit in a customer service role and clearly had no desire to work. I wonder if she will be able to afford this “life” she is so smug about considering our company has the highest starting pay rate in the city with the most flexible hours for scheduling around school, and she just burned three bridges.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on job sites for the last few years due to a lot of raw luck, and most job listings are generally in the same few categories: “Vague”, “Dry-But-Straight-Forward”, “We’re-A-FUN-And-Quirky-Workplace”, “I have someone in mind but I had to write a job ad”, and maybe a few, “I’m not paying you more than minimum wage, but you’d better have seven years of experience.”

Here’s one I saw today that really stood out for an unreasonable ask. It was full of grammatical errors and random capitalization.

Job Listing: “Full Job Description: Experienced, effective graphic design EXPERT. Must have advertising background. In order to apply, you must submit a mock ad for our brand to my email, which can be found in the contact section of [Website].

“We are looking for an artist who can create poignant call-to-action ads that fit our company aesthetic. The ideal candidate can provide a portfolio of advertising design work. Must attach examples of AD work for women’s clothing, even if it’s just a mock-up, for this position. Please do not apply if you do not have an advertising graphic design background.

“Office location is inside a clothing boutique. Must be able to run store functions and ring up customer sales as needed. If you do not want to also be a sales associate, do not apply.”

So, they are asking for you to make an ad for free. Don’t ask designers to make demo designs; that’s a real design you’re asking for, and that’s what you need to pay for. Not to mention, that’s why people have portfolios. Artists, designers, etc. don’t do spec work. That’s how you get scammed and taken advantage of. Draw a hard line on free professional work.

And apparently, the super graphic designer “EXPERT” also has to run the store for them. Because experienced, established marketing designers love to jump back into retail just for funsies.

There wasn’t a pay scale listed, and I didn’t look too carefully after seeing “Send me a design first.” I only clicked back into the ad a second later when my brain went, “Wait, did they say you have to run the store, too?”

I work as an assistant manager at a local pizza place that has been around for many years but is struggling due to a bad location. Because of this, we only have two to three employees on shift at a time, tops — and this in a place where we make every single ingredient fresh every day!

I’m in the office and I hear some raised voices coming from the front counter. I come out to find this thirty-ish-looking guy in baggy clothes yelling at my coworker, a sweet little short girl, because he had come in asking to apply for a job and she had gotten him a job application.

Guy: “B****, I didn’t want to actually apply for a job! I wanted you to sign my unemployment paper so I can say I applied here!”

Coworker: “Sir, if you could just fill out the application first with basic information, then we can—”

Guy: “I’m gonna come across the counter and fix your attitude!”

He is literally doing that as I walk around the corner. He is trying to come around the counter to grab her; he must have figured she was alone as the restaurant is empty right after lunch hours.

It takes me about half a second to physically jump in front of this guy’s face and block the opening and another half a second to decide to put fists up, too, because this guy has “assault” written all across his face. Part of me is like, “Oh, God I’m terrified,” but there is no way I’m going to let this happen in front of me, even though I’m about twenty-one years old and one hundred pounds lighter than this guy!

As my coworker frantically explains what is happening and this dude is spitting insults at me, too, the only thing I can think to tell the guy is:

Me: “Sir, you can either fill out the application, which I would be happy to sign for you, or you can leave right now, in which case the cops she’s calling right now may catch you by the time they arrive.”

He left ASAP, but not before telling my coworker he’d “see her around town.” We called the police and, because my coworker saw his name on his unemployment form (he had it out the whole time), they ended up seeing him around town a lot sooner!

I am the hiring manager for our big box retail store. We’ve gotten a lot of interesting characters, and during this time of crisis, I haven’t been overly picky.

Then, one day, I got this resume. Well… “resume” is only used in the loosest definition of the word. It was an email with “[Candidate]’s resume” in the subject and then just a link in the body.

Okay… Odd, but not something that kills your chances. Some of the more verbose applicants at least say something about the resume being available on this or that job hunting site and provide a link to that. While I consider this a tiny bit lazy, I HAVE found a few diamonds this way.

I clicked on the link. Until my dying day, I will laugh every time I remember it. I actually did burst out laughing uncontrollably. I laughed so hard and so long that some of my employees and a few fellow managers came to investigate.

The link had brought us to THE most pretentious website about the candidate. The website was crammed to the gills with bullet points about his “achievements.”

One said, “I went to [War-Torn And Extremely Dangerous Country] and single-handedly transformed the local government to serve the people.”

Another claimed he had “arm-wrestled a [Notorious Biker Gang] leader and won.”

There were obviously-staged photographs of him shaking hands with various people of color and smiling. The captions under these explained how they claimed that the handshake had transformed their lives.

His one and only reference was supposedly some kind of general of a nation who would worship the ground the applicant walked upon; all we had to do was call and mention his name!

Every sentence was self-serving, self-congratulatory, and painfully obviously a complete and utter lie. I half-expected him to tout himself as the one who threw an evil ring into a volcano or personally splashed water on a green witch’s face and melted her.

But the pièce de résistance? A video of him strategically slouched in an ornate almost-a-throne chair, surrounded by fawning girls while talking about how awesome he was.

It was so bad that it became an infamous story about the worst — but funniest — resume ever submitted.

It turned out, though, that we had an intern who had been a classmate of this candidate’s. When the story reached the intern, they came to talk to me.

Intern: “Yeah. He made up a lot of unbelievable stories in class. One time, he claimed to have gotten in a street fight where he did some Jet Li fighting after getting stabbed in the stomach with a bowie knife. Funny thing is, he doesn’t have any scars to prove it, and he refuses to explain why or admit that he’s full of it.”

Obviously, I never called the applicant back for an interview because the job had nothing to do with writing fantasy stories.

When I was eighteen, I noticed an ad in the paper saying that a gas station was hiring. I decided to head down to the local branch and talk to the owner.

Me: “Hi. I read that ‘Help Wanted’ ad of yours in the paper.”

Boss: “What ad?”

Me: “Uh… the… ad? In the local paper?”

Boss: “I didn’t post any ad.”

Me: “No?”

Boss: “No. Are you sure it wasn’t [Franchise Location ten miles away]?”

Me: “Oh… I guess it could have been.”

Boss: “However… now that you mention it… I kind of do need some more people…”

I ended up working part-time there for two years. And yes, the ad was for that other station.